Since this recycled article posted three years ago, almost all of the ‘Yellow Wave’ New Zealand flax in the landscape from with the pictures was taken has been replaced by reverted green growth.
Mutants are the source of many of our favorite cultivars of otherwise simpler specie. Many cultivars of plants with compact, pendulous or fastigiate (strictly vertical) growth, or variegated, bronzed, golden or otherwise abnormally colored foliage, were derived from ‘sports’, which are mutant stems that appear on otherwise normal plants. Thornless blackberries were sports of thorny cultivars. Fruitless mulberry is a sport of white mulberry. There is no shortage of mutants.
https://tonytomeo.wordpress.com/2018/05/07/cultivars-are-the-real-cloned-mutants/
https://tonytomeo.wordpress.com/2018/05/06/sport/
By nature, mutants are genetically unstable. A few can easily mutate back to their original and more genetically stable characteristics. Variegated plants are notorious for developing simple green unvariegated foliage. Because it has more chlorophyll, the unvariegated foliage grows faster, and has the potential to eventually overwhelm and replace the variegated foliage. That is why green sports should get pruned out of variegated plants.
‘President Roosevelt’ is the most popular of the few variegated rhododendrons. In nursery production…
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Tony Tomeo 